Summary: In an alternate season VI, Giles has not yet left
for England and when he makes his way to Revello Drive to check on the
Scoobies, he finds Spike crying against the tree just after Xander and Anya
have left.They did not notice his
approach or realize that he may have heard Xander’s “Tell me this isn’t the happiest
day of your life!” as he shoved an angry Spike into the tree.Willow and Tara are still in the house
with Dawn and Buffy.

Title: Someone Will Pay

Author: Slaymesoftly

Rating: PG

Word Count: 2601

Disclaimer: Joss didn’t write it this way – but he could
have, if he’d wanted to – it’s his playground.

Someone Will Pay

Spike remained where the boy had
pushed him against the tree, making no attempt to wipe away the angry tears
still streaking his cheeks.His
head was pressed into the rough bark behind it, his eyes squeezed closed as he
tried to erase the image of Buffy’s shredded nails and torn knuckles.So absorbed was he in his conflicting
emotions that he didn’t notice the arrival of her watcher until the man ran up
and grabbed him by the lapels.

The vampire shook his head and
tried to focus on the other man.His brow wrinkled for a second, then he realized that Giles had
misunderstood his tears.

“The Bit is fine, Rupert.She’s inside.”Spike’s voice was flat and quiet as he
pushed himself away from the tree and rubbed at his face, ashamed to have been
caught crying.

“Well then, what’s wrong with
you?And why aren’t you in there
taking care of her?”

“Pushed me out, didn’t they?Don’t need Spike anymore – got back
what they wanted.Never mind the
consequences…don’t hang around to help her out…just work the bloody spell and
leave…leave her…make her…”He made
a choking noise and turned his face away from the puzzled man.

“What spell?Make who do what?What the bloody hell are you talking
about, Spike?”

“Buffy.”The vampire’s voice was barely a whisper, only the movement
of his lips as he turned haunted eyes back to the watcher allowed Giles to
recognize what he had said.

“Buffy?What about Buffy?Is that what this is about?”Giles let out a relieved sigh and dropped his hands.“I thought we were past this,” he said
quietly. He looked towards the house, wondering what could have happened
tonight to start the vampire grieving again.“Look,” he began as sympathetically as he could, “I
understand.We…we’re all still
suffering from--.But you need to
pull yourself together, man.It
does Dawn no good to watch—“

“Buffy,” the vampire repeated
stubbornly, continuing when Giles just stared at him without speaking.“Buffy…here. In the house. With
Dawn.With those stupid, arrogant
children who brought her back.”

He clutched the other man’s jacket,
much as Giles had done to him.“Do
you understand me?They brought
her back.Didn’t tell the Bit,
didn’t tell you, didn’t tell me.Didn’t tell any of us, did they?Didn’t let anyone in on it who might have known better.Who might have worried about the
consequences…”

The ex-watcher’s face darkened and
his eyes widened with understanding.

“Oh, good lord! Willow…? Willow
did… she did this?”He looked at
the house with trepidation.“Wha—how is Bu-- what does she look like?”He mentally prepared himself for whatever he might have to do
if Buffy had come back wrong.

“She looks like someone who was
peacefully dead and woke up to dig herself out of her own bloody grave. That’s
what she looks like!” Spike snarled, then folded in upon himself.“She looks lost, Watcher.That’s how she is.She’s lost.”

The older man squeezed his eyes
shut briefly, then squared his shoulders and stared at the front door.“Right then,” he said quietly. “I’ll
need to go in and see what’s what.Are you coming?”He cast an
eye back at the now calm vampire, surprised when Spike shook his head.

“I’m not wanted by anyone right now
– least of all the ones who did this to her.They want praise and thank yous, not reminders of what kind
of forces they’ve awakened.You go
in.See your girl.”

Giles nodded and began to walk
towards the door.From the corner
of his eye, he watched Spike slide down the tree to sit at its base, his back
against the trunk and his hands dangling between his knees.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He entered the house to hear
Willow’s voice raised in what could only be anger.

“Spike? What do you want him for?Dawn doesn’t need him anymore, now that you’re back.You don’t need him.You have me.And Tara and Xander and Anya.We brought you
back; Dawn and Spike had nothing to do with it.I did it.
Me.I brought you back!”

“For which, I am, sure, Buffy will
be happy to thank you.”Giles’ dry
voice barely concealed the anger simmering behind his words.“Once she has recovered from the trauma
you have inflicted upon her.”

The witch whirled, guilt and fear
flickering across her face before the recollection of what she was now capable
of doing stiffened her back.

“I rescued her from hell,
Giles.Something no one else
wanted to try.Of course she’s
going to thank me.The demons scared
her when they destroyed the bot, that’s all.She’s fine.”

“That remains to be seen, doesn’t
it, Willow?” he responded coldly, moving toward the girl he’d never expected to
see again.Ignoring the witch’s
angry huff when he gently pushed her aside to kneel in front of Buffy, he
stared into his Slayer’s eyes, praying that he would see nothing there that he
didn’t want to.Buffy’s return
gaze was bewildered and subdued, but gave no sign that she wasn’t the same girl
who had plunged off Glory’s tower months earlier.He reached a shaking hand towards her face, pushing the damp
hair back as he whispered, “It’s really you. You are really here.”

Her response was another whispered
“Spike?” as she held up her tattered hands.

Giles’ gasp was muffled by Dawn’s
quick explanation. “Spike was fixing her hands when everybody came in and made
him leave.I think she wants him
to finish cleaning them up.”

The watcher glared at the girls
behind him, then said quietly, “Tara, would you please see if Spike is still
outside and ask him to come back in?”

“Giles, what is wrong with
you?She doesn’t need Spike. She
needs us. Her friends.The people
who saved her.”Willow’s voice
held a pleading note as she realized that the watcher was not showering her
with the praise that she felt her actions had earned.

“I believe, Willow…” His voice was
soft and controlled, as he had already noticed that Buffy flinched from loud
and sudden sounds. “…that what she may need at the moment is someone with an
understanding of what it means to claw your way out of a grave and back into
the world.”In spite of the
softness of his voice, there was underlying steel to his tone and Tara
obediently ran to the front door.

Rather than shouting for Spike, she
slipped outside and ran to kneel beside the vampire where he remained slumped
against the tree.

Disbelief and hope flared briefly
as he flowed gracefully to his feet.“Me?The Slayer wants me?”

Tara nodded, hastening to keep up
with vampire’s rapid steps.“He
thinks that you could help her…help her get used to…”

“To being alive?” he finished for
her, pulling open the door and moving into the living room.

“Exactly,” her watcher said
quietly, observing the way his slayer’s eyes went to the chipped vampire.Her shoulders relaxed as she held up
her hands.

“Fix?” she asked softly, her eyes
pleading with the trembling vampire.

Spike’s expression softened even
more as he fell to his knees in front of the girl he had made the center of his
world.“Yes, pet.We’ll fix them for you.Make you all well, we will.I promise you,” he finished
softly.The skeptical look she
gave him was the first sign that the normally quippy slayer was still in there
behind the dead-looking eyes.

His lips twitched at the look and
he shrugged as he whispered to her, “Do my best anyway.I’ll do what I can.”He finished cleaning her cuts, trimmed
her ragged fingernails and smoothed antibiotic ointment over them before gently
wrapping her hands in gauze and tape.“There you go, pet.Let
that Slayer healing kick in and you’ll be back to punching me in the nose
before you know it.”

Buffy nodded slowly as she took her
hands from his and put them back in her lap.The phone rang, startling everyone but causing Buffy to
flinch and put her hands over her ears.

At Dawn’s curious look, he
explained quietly, “Been someplace dark and quiet, hasn’t she?Gonna take her a while to get used to
all the noise and light.Probably
a good thing she rose—“ He stopped when the watcher made a strangled noise
behind him.“Sorry,” Spike
muttered, “force of habit. That it was night when she woke up – all the noise
and the light of the day would have frightened her even more.”

Dawn had obediently dimmed all the
lights and Tara’s voice was muffled as she took the phone into the
kitchen.Only Spike’s vampire
hearing could pick up her quiet explanations to Xander and Anya that Giles was
there and not as happy about Buffy’s appearance as they might have thought.

Buffy had slumped back against the
couch, shutting her eyes against even the dimmed lights and absently patting
Dawn’s leg when her sister snuggled up against her.When Dawn whispered, “I’m glad you’re back.I really missed you,” Buffy squeezed
her leg and nodded, without responding.After several tense minutes in which no one seemed to know what to say,
Buffy opened her eyes again and spoke her first complete sentence.

“I’m tired,” she said quietly.“I’m going to bed.”

She stood up, Dawn hovering
anxiously behind her, and walked towards the stairs.Ignoring Willow’s puzzled face and Tara’s worried one, she
allowed Giles to hug her and whisper in her ear, “I can’t be sorry that you’re
back, Buffy.I can’t. You are a
miracle.”

She nodded her acceptance and
gently ended the embrace.As she
walked past the vampire, she stopped and met his soft gaze.“Thank you,” she whispered.He nodded, unable to speak – to tell
her that he too couldn’t be sorry that she was back, that he was grateful that
his promise to protect Dawn had kept him from lying on her grave to await the
sunrise.The tiny smile that
twitched the corner of her mouth gave him some hope that she had read his
thoughts.As soon as she looked
away, he left the house without a word to anyone else.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Once Buffy and Dawn were out of
sight and they had heard the door to Buffy’s room close firmly behind her, Giles
gestured to the couch and said with deadly calm, “Sit down.”

Years of habit had the two witches
sitting before Willow could remember that she had just raised someone from the
dead and had no need to be afraid of the old watcher.

“What’s wrong with you?” she
immediately attacked.“You should
be jumping up and down with joy.”

“The way Buffy is?” he asked
quietly, with a pointed glance towards the upstairs.

Taken aback for only a few seconds,
Willow quickly responded.“Buffy
will be fine.You’ll see.Once she gets used to being back,
she’ll be thanking me for getting her out of whatever hell dimension she was
in.”

Giles nodded calmly.“Willow, do you know what it means to
be Heaven’s Chosen One?The one
who stands between the innocents of the world and the evil that stalks
them?The one who is expected to
give up her life if necessary to save that world?”

The red-haired witch frowned in
confusion. Beside her, her girlfriend’s eyes were growing wide as the message
behind the watcher’s words began to sink in. “Oh, Goddess,” Tara breathed
softly.

Giles’ eyes flickered to hers
briefly as he saw that his message had reached at least one of the girls.Willow stood up, her eyes flashing as
she responded, “Of course, I know what it means.But just because she is expected to give up her life,
doesn’t mean that she has to.She
was in Hell, Giles.Did you expect
me to just leave her there?”

“She was in a grave, Willow,” he
said calmly; only his clenched fists gave away his distress.“Her body was in a grave. We put it
there ourselves.”

“And now she isn’t in that
grave.What’s your point?”

“Overlooking for the moment the
fact that you left her to dig herself out of that grave,” he began, taking
pleasure in the way that the self-confident witch blanched when reminded of how
badly they had botched Buffy’s resurrection, “did it never once occur to you
that if her body was truly dead, then her soul had been released to go to its
proper place?”

He waited while Tara’s eyes filled
with understanding and tears and Willow’s confident demeanor wavered
briefly.Then the doubt was gone
and the red-haired witch drew herself up to declare, “I did the right
thing.You’re just jealous because
you don’t have that kind of power.”

The Ripper’s violent past flared briefly
as the man stood up to face the defiant girl he had known since she was a geeky
sophomore in high school.“You
don’t know what kind of power I have,” he said with quiet menace.“Do not challenge me, Willow.You have done a very stupid thing and it
remains to be seen how much damage you have caused.”

“If I caused any damage,” she
responded haughtily, “I’ll be able to fix it.You might want to think about what I can do before you go
threatening me, Giles.”

With a last, cold glare, the
watcher turned and left the house without so much as a “good-night”, vowing to
call the Council’s coven as soon as he got home and ask them for advice on how
to handle a very powerful, but untrained, arrogant and unpredictable witch.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

He was almost to his car when he
smelled cigarette smoke. He found Spike standing at the foot of the tree near
Buffy’s room, staring up at the roof.

“What are you doing?” he asked,
more roughly than he intended, his anger at Willow carrying over to the
vampire.

“What I’ve done every night for the
last four months,” Spike replied quietly as he prepared to leap up to the
roof.“Watching over my girl – got
even more reason now, don’t I?”

Giles shook his head.“I doubt, even as confused as she
obviously is, that Buffy will need a bodyguard while she sleeps, Spike.”

The vampire turned haunted eyes on
the other man.“There will be
nightmares, Watcher.Trust
me.She’s gonna be dreamin’ about
that grave for a long time.Not
gonna let her go through that alone.”Without another word, he leapt gracefully into the tree and swung his
legs onto the roof.He settled
down next to the window of Buffy’s room and closed his eyes, effectively
shutting out the man staring at him from below.

Giles stared at the dark shape of
the vampire who defied everything he’d ever been taught about demons.When he realized that Spike was through
talking to him, he turned away, getting into his car and heading for his home
and the trans-Atlantic phone calls he was going to have to make.